Conventional wood laminates consist of a plurality of superposed, fairly thin or fairly thick veneer layers glued to each other, in which the main grains of the laminates are parallel as far as possible. The grains of the individual laminates vary maximally two degrees at random, when all the laminate layers are compared to each other. Hence, the aim of wood laminates is to copy a beam or similar of solid wood, however with a more homogeneous structure. The strength of current wood laminates in a beam has been developed to top performance, and in fact, they are mainly used precisely as beams, in which the main grain joins the longitudinal direction of the beam. The tensile strength and bending strength in the fiber direction of such a laminate beam are extremely high and the statistical deviation of the strength values of the products is very reduced. Some structures, however, involve problems for other reasons. When beams are connected with pin joints, such as bolts or nail plates, the transverse tensile strength will become the dominating strength with regard to the fiber direction. In such situations, a laminate will behave in the same way as a solid wooden beam. When nail plates are being used, the beam tends to crack in the fiber direction at the nail points, and under tensile stress, the beam tends to tear at the point of the pins, such as bolts. In this case, the dimensions of the wooden beam must be great enough to produce a sufficient joint area, although the load would allow a lower beam at other points. When a laminate is used as a beam of an I section, it tends to shear next to the glued joints in their direction, this phenomenon being known as plane shearing.
As a second option, plywood is used for some of the purposes described above, in which the alternating veneer layers form an angle of approx. 90.degree. with each other. As a matter of time, the strength of plywood deteriorates under the effect of moisture variations, and this is also a quite serious shortcoming. In addition, the tensile and bending strength of plywood is only of the order of approx. one third of the respective strength of straight wood laminate, which in many places causes an unnecessary coarse dimensioning.